page_title: Tuktoyaktuk
section_title: History
hierarchical_section_title: Tuktoyaktuk / History
caption_attribution_description: English: Natural-colour image of a region east of Alaska, along the Beaufort Sea. The area includes part of Liverpool Bay, the Eskimo Lakes, and the Tuktoyaktuk Peninsula. Tundra overlies permafrost around Liverpool Bay, but at this time of year, the nearby ocean is free of sea ice, and little if any snow is on the ground. This image has been rotated so that north is on the right.
context_page_description: Tuktoyaktuk English, or Tuktuyaaqtuuq IPA, is an Inuvialuit hamlet located in the Inuvik Region of the Northwest Territories, Canada, at the northern terminus of the Inuvik–Tuktoyaktuk Highway. Tuktoyaktuk is one of six Inuvialuit communities in the Inuvialuit Settlement Region. Tuktoyaktuk is commonly referred to simply by its first syllable, Tuk. The settlement lies north of the Arctic Circle on the shores of the Arctic Ocean, and is the only community in Canada on the Arctic Ocean that is connected to the rest of Canada by road. Formerly known as Port Brabant, the community was renamed in 1950 and was the first place in Canada to revert to the traditional Indigenous name.
context_section_description: Tuktoyaktuk is the anglicized form of the native Inuvialuit place-name, meaning "resembling a caribou". According to legend, a woman looked on as some caribou, common at the site, waded into the water and turned into stone, or became petrified. Today, reefs resembling these petrified caribou are said to be visible at low tide along the shore of the town.
  No formal archaeological sites exist today, but the settlement has been used by the native Inuvialuit for centuries as a place to harvest caribou and beluga whales. In addition, Tuktoyaktuk's natural harbour was historically used as a means to transport supplies to other Inuvialuit settlements.
  Between 1890 and 1910, a sizeable number of Tuktoyaktuk's native families were wiped out in flu epidemics brought in by American whalers. In subsequent years, the Dene people, as well as residents of Herschel Island, settled here. By 1937, the Hudson's Bay Company had established a trading post. On 9 September 1944, a serious fall windstorm blew through the community and severely damaged several buildings and schooners docked at the harbour, also killing 11 people en route back from a reindeer station on the Anderson River on the schooner Cally.
  Radar domes were installed beginning in the 1950s as part of the Distant Early Warning Line, to monitor air traffic and detect possible Soviet intrusions during the Cold War. The settlement's location (and harbour) made Tuk important in resupplying the civilian contractors and Air Force personnel along the DEW Line. In 1947, Tuktoyaktuk became the site of one of the first government day schools designed to integrate Inuit youth into mainstream Canadian culture.
  The community of Tuktoyaktuk eventually became a base for the oil and natural gas exploration of the Beaufort Sea. Large industrial buildings remain from the busy period following the Organization of Arab Petroleum Exporting Countries 1973 oil embargo and 1979 summertime fuel shortage. This brought many more outsiders into the region.
  In late 2010, the Canadian Environmental Assessment Agency announced that an environmental study would be undertaken on a proposed all-weather road between Inuvik and Tuktoyaktuk. Work on the Inuvik–Tuktoyaktuk Highway officially started on 8 January 2014, and the highway was officially opened on 15 November 2017.
caption: Satellite image of Liverpool Bay, the Husky Lakes, and the Tuktoyaktuk Peninsula
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